The crack of the bat, the smell of the grass and the pain of losing your purchased content to DRM deactivation. In what can only be called the biggest bonehead move since Bill Buckner's error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Major League Baseball has deactivated a DRM license server used to verify your worthiness to play back video of games you purchased online.
Due to an earlier decision to switch DRM providers, MLB's new content and old content are managed by different license authentication servers. After making the switch, MLB has arbitrarily decided it has no intention of honoring its earlier commitments to fans who purchased downloaded games under the old system, thereby rendering many fans shut-out.
Claiming the full-game downloads were "one-time sales", MLB is completely unapologetic to fans who've lost their purchased content to the horrors of DRM death. Quoted on Boing Boing, baseball super-fan and author Alan Wood writes, "Just got off the phone with a MLB customer service supervisor. [who said] 'MLB no longer supports the DDS system' that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them 'are no good. They will not work with the current system.'"
Shame on you Major League Baseball, this is fraud. We've warned Download Squad readers that buying DRM "protected" media is a crap-shoot, but when issuing those warnings we were mostly concerned about smaller media sales outlets going out-of-business in an ever evolving digital media landscape. This goes so far beyond those fears, with an active and profitable business making a clear and informed decision to yank the DRM rug out from under your purchased content.
Is it any wonder non-drm downloads via P2P are so popular? It's not simply about "free" in the base, capitalist notion of how much money changed hands, it's more pointedly about "freedom", the freedom to do what you wish with the content you've collected. If consumers aren't given options which allow them to get their content free as in freedom, they'll take that content free as in beer.
In short people paid for content that required communication with a DRM server to be accessible. Now the server was shut down because its owners didn't feel like keeping it up and the content is inaccessible without running into the DMCA. And yet they expect people to buy content covered by their current DRM servers.
So is there anyone who still thinks that the media companies want DRM for anything else other than making people pay for the same content multiple times ?
This is exactly what's wrong with online DRM technology. You think you have a copy of something that you can use at your whim, but in reality, you only use it so long as the vendor decides you can, and he can change his mind at any time. It's the same problem I have with downloaded music that will only play on one device; why the fuck should I pay for that?
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A joke, and pissing on economic principles to boot. How can this be said to be a fair exchange? That your purchase has actually acquired any meaningful "ownership" of a good or service for you? Really you've purchased a strong plea to a company to let you have some charity service, but if anything at all changes...well fuck you.
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The Fifth Illuminatus Primus | Warsie | Skeptical Empiricist | Florida Gator | Sustainability Advocate | LibertarianSocialist |
The whole idea of retaining control of data after it has been sold is retarded. Online copy protection does not work. Valve's Orange Box expansion was available in pirated dvd shops within days of release. So much for Steam's vaunted online distribution system intended to prevent piracy. Then there is Bioshock which installs for only 5 times. People who bought the legit version are crying while those with pirated discs can install and reinstall till the disc melts under the heat. There is not a common software, game or movie in existence that does not become available at 1 USD / DVD shops within days of release. The only people who are suffering are good people who pay for genuine products. Pirates are not affected at all and are continuing business as usual.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
Sarevok, don't be naive. Everyone *knows* DRM is largely useless, but it's a *product* and the makers are going to keep selling it. Look at Starforce: they pushed that shit on low-end developers by playing on fear that was all the stronger for developers who didn't expect to move as many units. DRM in downloaded music (for example) is almost always a result of negotiations to provide that music in the first place: it's usually not in the seller's interest, but music companies are both paranoid and stupid and wouldn't have let them sell their songs without restrictive but largely useless DRM.
Saying 'it doesn't work lol' is worthless. Everyone knows that. But politics and marketing are still going to see it used, because people are either afraid of losing money to piracy or greedy enough to want all that 'potential sales' money.
